Coprinopsis: an autobiography

This is my story. My autobiographical account of my 50-year research career. It has also turned out to be a biography of the ink cap mushroom which is now called Coprinopsis cinerea, so to put my own research into some perspective I do make reference to the work of others; both before and after my own half-century contribution. However, as I say, this is my story so don’t be surprised if my opinions dominate the line of argument I present. I have always been an experimentalist, and it seems to me that performing experiments on an organism and then interpreting their results is a close analogue of a ghost writer interviewing the subject of his/her biography, and then writing the text using the subject’s own words and calling it an autobiography. Throughout this account I will be showing you the results of a great many of my experiments and interpreting them to show you what they mean and how they contributed to a developing story. In many respects I will be using my subject’s own words to tell this story of a life. I’m just reporting what Coprinopsis has told me; that’s my justification for calling this an autobiography.